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Helobious

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Posts posted by Helobious

  1. 35 minutes ago, Somnio said:

    Not picking on you, but this is why I posted my non-expert projections.

    I hardly see either one of them as "sky is falling".

    I just have not seen one other mention of what even a relatively minor pandemic would actually mean in human lives.

    100 million deaths in a global pandemic with 7.5 billion plus people on the planet?  Umm, that's not "doomsday", "apocalyptic", or "sky is falling" level.

    Not to beat a dead horse, but Spanish Flu killed 50 Million and infected 500 million when the Earth only had 1.5 Billion people.

    I'm not talking Black Death numbers here.  I'm not taking extinction level event.

    I hope it doesn't turn out badly, but I've been watching this for over a month now, and this is not like anything anyone has seen for the last century.  This is not like Ebola or Sars 1.0

     

     

     

     

     

     

    It’s perfectly logical to expect this to kill twice as many people as the spanish flu. Medicine, technology, hygiene, and public awareness has regressed so much in the past 100 years.

    • Like 2
    • Haha 1
  2. 4 hours ago, BurntEyes said:

    Holy shit some meaningful discussion.

    Good stuff and I'll add in take. First, it's obviously a complex issue and I will note while I believe I have a grasp on some of the underlying cause, I'm also pretty sure I have no clue about the fix. I do know what it isn't, simple one item political fixes.

    First, I'm well aware of a pattern of behavior that is now perpetuated in this country by a vast majority of parents, schools and society in general. It is that the world should be fair. That we should all be winners. That anything is possible. That's a great idea, and a decent hopeful philosophy by which to live. However, it's not reality. It never has been and never will be. It sets people of all background up for a huge slap in the face when reality kicks in.

    Next, there is, in this country in particular but really in most of the 1st world a fucking obsession with celebrity. Everyone seems to be looking for it and much worse, because of the underpinning above EXPECT it. Case in point, at least 50% of the profiles I see on tinder are women looking for Instagram followers for whatever reason. Every social media platform is full of someone trying to get that great viral hit of some sort. The mass media plays into that same shit on both sides. Our airwaves are full of various insta-celebrity shows, reality shows, shows celebrating celebrity. It's a fucking beating. I hard turn on any standard TV station anymore because of it. 

    Next is a complete and total inept mental health system in this country due to horrible underfunding. Beyond that is the stigma attached to mental illness or now conversely, everyone having a mental illness. Everyone is depressed, or biPolar or something that requires medications. Now, I fully realize this part is conflicting itself. That's the fucking irony. I think some real issues are overlooked, while some people cling to it as an excuse all while the Pharma industry profits off the clingers and the really sick people get fucked by over priced meds and lack of treatment.

    Next is our fucked up ass criminal industrial complex. Really mentally ill people go to jail or prison or end up on the streets. Many become addicts. Many addicts end up on the street. Many people are just fucked up. So.. toss in the addicts and mentally ill addicts to our mix that confuse the issue of treatment and recognition of people that are in need or might be threats. Where, even if it is recognized early and recently they have been, nobody knows wtf to do about it.

    Now I turn back to social media and turn on tech itself. Many people don't pick up the phone to speak anymore. I have a friend here on this very forum that won't take a call. I have others that do the same. I have some folks in my life that communicate only via Facebook messenger. I know others that rarely engage with me outside of social media posts. The work place is the same world of texting and email, with less and less phone. I go to a bar and people are communicating via text, to each other, while sitting at the fucking bar. No joke, this happens.

    I don't know the answer. It is a huge a mess, but if we don't start talking again, face to face or over the phone, it won't get better. We have to become humans again. A society that engages outside of the digital world. We need to fund mental health, which includes addiction treatment. We need to be kinder to one another. We need to stop drawing lines in the sand over our team politics. We need the media to join us.

    We need to be a society of humans.

    I don't know the fix, but I know what won't help and that's the same tired political shit that normally occurs.

     

    I’ll just say this is ironic coming from you. 
     

    The rise of anonymity is what’s contributing to what you’re talking about. It’s easy to say something terrible to someone when they’re just a username on a screen (as you’ve demonstrated), or a twitter handle, or a driver of another car, or someone passing by. It’s easy to be mean to that person, because you don’t know them as a person. To you they’re just pixels on a screen or an annoyance in your daily life. No one thinks about what’s going on in that other person’s head. You couldn’t have known I was someone that struggled with depression, anxiety, and anger all my life. Or that your flippant, perhaps non-literal comment would stick with me so much that I still think of it months later. It’s the only thing I think about anytime I see your username. 
     

    A mentally ill person doesn’t brush things off like a rational person. They take all those little comments literally, take all the minor dismissals and disrespectfulness they encounter daily and use them to feed their hate, rage, or whatever it is that slowly eats them up. They use it to reinforce their opinion that no one cares about them, the world is against them, they don’t matter, and that all other people are terrible and deserve what’s coming. All of that can build inside those people until they explode one day. 

  3. 3 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

     


    From your repeated posts in this thread, you seem to be under the impression that quarantines are only successful if they are 100% effective in stopping the spread of the virus. That isn’t the case. Quarantines play a major role in slowing the spread of the virus, even if the virus is ultimately transmitted beyond the quarantine. Is it ideal? No, but it’s all we can do at this point.

    It’s easy to argue the quarantines in Wuhan and throughout China were implemented late, and that’s obviously true in hindsight. However, from a global perspective, the fact they were implemented at all has significantly slowed the spread to other countries. It now seems inevitable that the entire world will get it, but at least these quarantines are buying us time.

    Time for what? Ramp up PPE production and distribution, increase hospital capacity and resources, vaccine development (yes that may be a year away), study other medical treatments, and the hope that warmer weather may magically reduce transmission. It’s something. Without the quarantines it likely would’ve spread throughout the U.S. a month ago.

     

     Yeah. 1,000,000 getting infected over 2 months is a lot more manageable than 1,000,000 infected in 2 weeks. 

  4. 1 minute ago, Goo Punch said:

    you know what i don't get? all of the people in these threads who "don't get" why this deranged mass murderer did what he did. "why does he have to take out seven more people? what's going through his head? doesn't he realize what a pathetic cliche he is?" what, exactly, about someone being fucked in the head is hard for you to understand? anyone who gets fired and then goes on a killing spree is clearly and totally fucked between the ears. what's not to understand?

    This. Never got that response at all.

    Most fascinating episode of season 1 of “I am a killer” on Netflix is the episode where they interviewed the guy that killed 3 people in Laredo with an axe. He says he felt happy after the murders, because by killing he appeased the devil, and now the devil would protect him and he would never die. He says, “whether or not that makes sense to anyone else, it didn’t matter. It made sense to me”. 

  5. 21 minutes ago, Tailgate said:

    Everyone, calm down...it will be ok.

    If it’s any consolation... official numbers say less than 80,000 people were infected in Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of all this. Realistic estimates put that number well over 100,000. I say fuck that, let’s take the estimated number and x10 it. Let’s say there’s over 1,000,000 people infected in Wuhan. 
     

    That still means “only” about 9% of the city of Wuhan got infected with this thing. Scary for sure, but perspective can’t be lost. Obviously the number of cases will still grow, but 9% in the city where this was most out of control isn’t too bad.

  6. 35 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

    Why did you need 800 words to correct a single number? 

    If you are so dumb to believe presidents literally, perhaps you could show us where your family saved $2500 from Obamacare. 

    But do that in the correct thread.

    Your post is far more CR than any of his. Pretty telling that people get this offended by other people pointing out that our president said something that was inaccurate. 

    • Like 7
  7. 36 minutes ago, horncyclist said:

    I've been following this thread and the news developments. Reading this it kind of sunk in. Is it really a 15-20% hospitalization rate? This is going to disrupt our way of life for a year. Until the vaccine is widely available.

    Lulz at there ever being a vaccine for this.

    No one knows what the true hospitalization rate is. Roughly 20% that tested positive for it needed to be hospitalized. But not everyone infected even gets tested or needs to go to the hospital. 

    • Like 1
  8. 2 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

    It’s not inevitable that every disease must evolve reduced mortality.  This virus apparently has a long incubation period during which the infected is contagious.  And 2% is already a pretty low mortality rate.  98% of infected don’t die and are thus infectious for the maximum duration.  It’s spreading rapidly at the current rate; this isn’t SARS or MERS, which petered out precisely because they killed too effectively.  
     

    So what, in your expert opinion, is the environmental pressure on a disease with those characteristics to become less lethal?

    We don’t even know what the true mortality rate is, how infectious it is, etc. This disease has only been at the forefront for about 2 months. But your Harvard professor wouldn’t get much attention for saying, “we’re still in the early stages of this disease, we don’t fully understand how severe a crisis it can truly become”. It’s much easier to say “this will infect everyone and end the world” because that’s much more attention grabbing.

    • Like 1
  9. 12 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

    Okay, that’s fine squishy analysis.  But you’re ignoring the mathematics of it.  The current data points to a 2% mortality rate.  An expert in epidemiology, having studied other relevant statistics about the disease, is predicting 40-70% infection rates.  If those numbers are correct or approximately correct, then the fatalities will be along the lines of what I posted.  That’s just math.

    Now, the experts might be wrong and the data might be skewed. But I’m not going to take some random message board dude’s word that “It’s just another cold.”  Because you have cited absolutely zero data to support that view.

    It’s pretty naive to think that mortality rate will hold steady. Unless this acts like no other virus in the history of mankind, it’ll eventually evolve down to a less lethal strain (like the spanish flu did). 

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